Dungeon Strategy, Suplimental to TOTE

[Magelord]

Hey everyone I was going to put this in Infiltrator's thread for completeness but didn't want it to look like I was trying to hijack his thread so started a new one here.

I've been playing Warlocks since well day 1 with Heroes, and it is a whole new ballgame with the advent of TOTE! I've been able to consistently devastate early game neutrals and enemy heroes with Sinitar (Empowered Spells) and a small army of Stalkers and Shadow Mistresses.
This necessitates a few small changes to strategy but gives you the added bonus of Two Ubber heroes! How? Well if your primary hero walks through the game with just Stalkers and Shadow Mistresses that leaves your secondary hero back at the castle with the bulk of the army Blood Furies, Minotaur Guards, Hydras, Black Riders, and Dragons to go stompin about on his own!

Should you want to experiment with this new style of gameplay with the Dungeon town here are a few things you need to know.

1. Pick Sinitar for the above mentioned reason

2. Upgrade from Scouts to Stalkers right away. (first priority) This lets you explore earlier in the game and take opponents that wont even move till the end of the third turn when your Stalkers become visible again.

3. With Stalkers in hand focus on getting Sinitar to Expert Destructive Magic as he will carry the bulk of the battles.

4. Since Sinitar will be doing the bulk of the work this now necessitates a developed Mage Guild early on. You should have at least a level three guild by the end of week 2. Higher if Sinitar already has Expert Destructive Magic.

5. Build toward getting the Shadow Mistresses as soon as possible as this will give Sinitar that extra punch he needs to finish off the larger monsters on the map plus a little staying power against enemy heroes.

6. Develop the rest of the Dungeon as you would normally


When battling across the map:

1. Your strategy depends on you being able to make your units invisible before they are obliterated by anything they encounter and engaging enemies that can be defeated by Sinitar's spells alone if necessary.

2. Develop any skills that assist in increasing Sinitar's Mana Pool, Reduction of mana costs and so on. Artifacts that provide a Knowledge & Spell Power bonus really come into their own here as well. Spell power goes without saying PUMP IT UP!

3. Artifacts that increase unit speed are essential since our strategy depends on making Stalkers and Shadow Mistress invisible right away. This shouldn't be too difficult since since the Dungeon comes with an Artifact merchant!

4.Lastly simply pick your targets with attention to what has a higher speed rating (hence the advantage of speedy artifacts) than your Stalkers & Shadow Mistresses and what Sinitar's level of Spellpower and Knowledge is and commence to cleaning up the map!

[ThunderTitan]

Yeah, we know already... and if you don't have Exp DM by the 2nd week you're either doing something wrong or are incredibly unlucky.

And for fast opponents you can always split your forces into smaller groups to insure at least one gets to go invisible.

[Metathron]

Picking Sinitar certainly helps in conserving mana, but this can be done with the other heroes as well; in any case, I do not like picking one hero over and over but prefer trying all of them out, however inferior they may appear to be.

I find that mage guild 2 is enough in the first and even second week, precisely because of the lack of mana. But going for Expert Destructive is still a priority for making your spells stronger, especially the initially super-weak Lightning Bolt (I still maintain that it makes no sense that Lightning Bolt is weaker than Eldritch Arrow!)

Dark Ritual is also a good skill to have because you're better off spending one whole turn to regain your mana than going all the way back to those eldritch wells or your castle (provided they're more than one turn away, that is).

I usually start the game with only a pack of stalkers, then I add the blood furies to defeat those enemies the stalkers + your hero are unable to deal with. So the furies/sisters usually come before mistresses in my games. However, later on in the game, I will often leave out my dragons, furies and raiders in battles (including castle sieges) and keep only the stalkers and the mistresses, casting wildly with my hero, with little or no losses at the end (will always be some in castle sieges).

Also, I've just recently discovered how wonderful it is to pick Light Magic with your warlock, even if it may seem an imprudent choice. I picked it relatively late in the game, of course, and it helps to know that there's a castle somewhere with Light Magic readily available. Needless to say, spells like Mass Haste, Mass Divine Strength, Mass Righteous Might, Resurrection, Teleportaion (for your hydras) will work wonders for your army!

[ThunderTitan]

Dark Ritual needs to take less then 100% movement imo... something like 70-80% should be more then enough.

[tb5841]

This really wouldn't work against a human player.

The next patch really needs to fix AI attitudes to invisibility, since if they walked around/casted area effect spells like a human player would, invisibility would be nowhere near as powerful.

[Metathron]

Dark Ritual needs to take less then 100% movement imo... something like 70-80% should be more then enough.

I disagree. You always have a choice. Either visit a magic well/stay in your town "overnight" or perform the Dark Ritual. If I'm four days away from a well or town, why would I lament the loss of one turn for the regaining of all my mana?

This really wouldn't work against a human player.

The next patch really needs to fix AI attitudes to invisibility, since if they walked around/casted area effect spells like a human player would, invisibility would be nowhere near as powerful.

I used to think invisibility was way too powerful, but now I just think it is really powerful. But you're right, the AI could do more; I'm not sure I'd like it to walk around too much trying to find you as that might decrease the value of invisibility too much, but at least cast area effect spell, such as the elder druid's stone spikes or the pit fiend's fireball.

Also, in one fight against invisible mistresses I cast a firewall where one of them was supposed to be, but nothing was revealed. What gives?

[Elvin]

I have been playing dungeon lately and getting a pretty fast creeping. Earlygame can be a bit erratic considering which skills will pop up, which neutrals, how much spellpower you get, what spell secrets of destruction give etc.

My priorities are exp destructive->secrets/ignite, enlightenment->intelligence/wizard's reward and logistics.
If you can build mage guild 2 on day one and already have stalkers. do it, it will increase you chances on getting a lvl 3 spell through secrets.
Then build furies that you will transfer to your main with a secondary, your mana will be low in the first few days and furies can do some cheap and mana free kills effortlessly.

If you get ignite and a fire spell you keep creeping like there is no tomorrow, you seriously can clear almost everything. Even if not the second spell you get through secrets will be enough to clear all mines week 1, even in let's fight that has them guarded by hordes of tier 3.

If you did not get a fire spell get guild 3(4 if possible) and/or trade guild to buy a few artifacts before you leave your starting area. That way I killed lots of magmas week 2 day 5(lvl 17) and horde of archangels two days later.

[Tensho]

Just to say something:
if you put stalkers on the back line there is like 90% they will be first.
Only works if they are not splitted.
And you dont need matriarchs...they have lower initiative than the stalkers.

What you really shoud get is meteor shower.With sinitar special MS hits half of the battlefield.

[Elvin]

I have upgraded the shadow witches only one or two times Since the stalkers do the same job they are redundant unless the game is long and you want them to also do some damage. Generally I aim for dragons week 2 or 3 and the money is scarce to also upgrade units.

[Mirez]

another reason to play stronghold
you can find out where the invisible units are using the the 'set snares' ability from the goblin trapper

[Magelord]

Most excellent, and I was starting to think there were only the smallest handful of Warlocks out there! You Guys/Gals? go with your bad selves!

[ThunderTitan]

Dark Ritual needs to take less then 100% movement imo... something like 70-80% should be more then enough.

I disagree. You always have a choice. Either visit a magic well/stay in your town "overnight" or perform the Dark Ritual. If I'm four days away from a well or town, why would I lament the loss of one turn for the regaining of all my mana?

IMO too many "lose one day" abilities gets annoying... plus, 20-30% movement isn't gonna really make that much difference (see Summon Creature) but will make you feel better.

[Elvin]

@Magelord
I used to be an academy guy but was corrupted along the way Dungeon is far from a typical faction and more complicated than invisibility and nuke em all tactics that some people tend to believe.

[Banedon]

Just thinking aloud (without much experience with Dungeon in TotE): how about using Lethos instead of Sinitar? Decay deals more damage per cast than most other spells, but they need time to function - but that's not a problem with units invisible anyway. If you get lucky Lethos's initial poison might even allow wins without casting spells, saving you mana and time.

[tb5841]

I tried using Lethos - creeping becomes very very easy with Decay + Stalkers + his special ability. And Arcane Intuition (needed for Swift Mind anyway) later lets you learn Slow, Vulnerability and Confusion from Shadow Mistresses, making Dark Magic not really such a bad choice.

Lots of units are immune to decay though, which spoils it.

[Mirez]

lethos was my favorite choise at homm5 nilla, but that is because I switched summoning magic with dark magic, but I don't know how to do that with tote :'(